6 May
2006
6 May
'06
8:20 a.m.
"How Poverty Racializes Competition for City Council Seats"
Abstract
A growing body of literature has focused on the institutional and
electoral factors that lead to improved representation of minorities
on city councils. These studies, however, often employ OLS
regression, a methodology that can result in out-of-bounds predictions
for council membership. We employ a statistical model that produces
sensible results, in part by accounting for the zero-sum nature of
descriptive representation on city councils. Applying this model to a
recent study which argues that turnout increases representation for
minority groups (Hajnal and Trounstine 2005) we find little connection
between higher levels of voter turnout and greater descriptive
representation of minority groups. We find, instead, that poverty
provides an explanation, with higher numbers of black poor,
especially, leading to higher black and white representation at the
expense of Latinos. We conclude by arguing that the demographic
features that activate racial politics deserve greater attention in
studies of city council representation.
6 May
6 May
8:28 a.m.
On Sat, 6 May 2006, Clayton Nall wrote:
"How Poverty Racializes Competition for City
Council Seats"
Abstract
A growing body of literature has focused on the institutional and
electoral factors that lead to improved representation of minorities
i'd change 'improved' to 'increased'. even if it really is
'right', its
better that you take a dispassionate scientific stance.
on city councils. These studies, however, often
employ OLS
regression, a methodology that can result in out-of-bounds predictions
i'd change 'out of bounds' to 'impossible'
for council membership. We employ a statistical model
that produces
sensible results, in part by accounting for the zero-sum nature of
descriptive representation on city councils. Applying this model to a
recent study which argues that turnout increases representation for
minority groups (Hajnal and Trounstine 2005) we find little connection
between higher levels of voter turnout and greater descriptive
representation of minority groups. We find, instead, that poverty
provides an explanation, with higher numbers of black poor,
especially, leading to higher black and white representation at the
expense of Latinos.
a weird result. so to increase representation, it would be good to take
money away from blacks? even weird if you argue that more black poor
means that they get politically mobilizied since its not normally the poor
that is mobilized.
We conclude by arguing that the demographic features
that activate
racial politics deserve greater attention in studies of city council
representation.
this sentence is summarizing your paper, not focusing on your results.
remember that no one cares about your paper or you(!), they only care
about your results. so delete or just argue it (these results suggest
that scholars focus...)
Gary
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8:41 a.m.
New subject: [gov2001-l] Another updated abstract
The ambivalent effects of bonding social capital for local
representation
re-evaluating the effect of civic engagement on mass-elite policy
agenda agreement
Contributing to the debate which forms of social capital are the
cornerstone of functioning democratic governance and which are
harmful, Hill and Matsubayashi (2005) find that membership in
'bonding organizations' is negatively associated with mass-elite
policy agenda agreement in a community while bridging social capital
has no measurable effect. Our paper shows that the effects are much
more ambiguous than the authors claim. Hill and Matsubayashi (2005)
constructs the critical indices for social capital and participation
by aggregating from a small sample (~25 per community) of individual-
level data. Nevertheless the article treats these measures as
?precise?. We demonstrate that when taking into account the sampling
variability of this information, the uncertainty of the estimates
does not allow conclusive findings. Furthermore when we exclude
variables that pose post-treatment bias we find that bridging social
capital might actually have a positive effect on policy concurrence.
However a dataset with a substantially larger sample size per
community would be necessary to reliably assess these relationships.
---
Thomas Soehl
MPA candidate 2007 / McCloy Scholar
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
8:44 a.m.
New subject: [gov2001-l] Another updated abstract
this is good, but the writing is a bit confusing. i can figure it out,
but i'd try to make it a bit more melifluous. sounds trivial, i know, but
if people stop reading because they get sidetracked by the prose, you
won't get your point across. try reading especially the first sentence
out loud.
Gary
On Sat, 6 May 2006, Thomas Soehl wrote:
The ambivalent effects of bonding social capital for local representation
re-evaluating the effect of civic engagement on mass-elite policy agenda
agreement
Contributing to the debate which forms of social capital are the cornerstone
of functioning democratic governance and which are harmful, Hill and
Matsubayashi (2005) find that membership in 'bonding organizations' is
negatively associated with mass-elite policy agenda agreement in a community
while bridging social capital has no measurable effect. Our paper shows that
the effects are much more ambiguous than the authors claim. Hill and
Matsubayashi (2005) constructs the critical indices for social capital and
participation by aggregating from a small sample (~25 per community) of
individual-level data. Nevertheless the article treats these measures as
?precise?. We demonstrate that when taking into account the sampling
variability of this information, the uncertainty of the estimates does not
allow conclusive findings. Furthermore when we exclude variables that pose
post-treatment bias we find that bridging social capital might actually have
a positive effect on policy concurrence. However a dataset with a
substantially larger sample size per community would be necessary to reliably
assess these relationships.
---
Thomas Soehl
MPA candidate 2007 / McCloy Scholar
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
6577
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3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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king＠harvard.edu -
nall＠fas.harvard.edu -
thomas_soehl＠ksg07.harvard.edu